The Reflective Practitioner in Higher
Education: The Nature and Characteristics of Reflective Practice Among Teacher
Education Faculty

Literature:Recently, there has been a call for greater
accountability and a nationwide investment in assessing and documenting the
outcomes of education (Levine, 2005). As a result universities have refocused
their attention on teaching and the instructional performance of college
teachers. According to Baiocco and DeWaters (1998), since faculty are the
infantry, attacking the problems on the front lines within colleges and
universities, it can be argued that faculty development is the key to reform.
As part of their professional role, faculty are responsible for analyzing,
synthesizing, evaluating, and communicating the changes that are occurring not
only in the disciplines but also in society.

This refocus on college teaching is not without
precedent.Boyer (1990) led a challenge
to traditional conceptions of the work of college faculty with his model of
scholarship—which has become ubiquitous in higher education faculty
literature.His notion of the scholarship of teaching has permeated
the global community, and become the framework for large-scale quality
assurance programs in England
(Ottewill and Macfarlane, 2004) and South Africa (Strydom, Zulu, and
Murray, 2004).

Shuster (2003) contributed a concise rationale for the
importance of this focus on faculty teaching in higher education.

“The focus on actual student
learning has been neglected.Put another
way, for far too long presumptions of educational quality were linked to input
measures…such as the academic degrees of the faculty, the size of the library,
the institutional endowment, and standardized scores of entering
students….[there is a belated awareness] that such inputs are not the best
potential measures of educational effectiveness and have little bearing on how
well students learn”(p.17).

Shuster continues (p.16) that “the stakes are higher today”
in higher education—with strictures on funding, greater competition among
non-traditional providers and pressures from the global marketplace.He concludes this essay with the observation
that “higher education is currently experiencing more profound changes in a shorter
span of time than has ever been the case” (p.17).McNaught (2003) describes these changes as in
part “being required to educate more students, from an increasing variety of
backgrounds, with decreasing government funding; they [colleges] are required
to compete vigorously for student enrollments and external sources of funding.”
Altogether, the faculty’s capacity to manage these pressures maximizes the
importance that the faculty becomes critically reflective of its role, its
practice, and its goals in the academy.

Current research on higher education shows an increasing recognition that
the faculty are at the center of any attempt to improve the quality of teaching
and learning. Attempts to reorganize programs, develop curriculum, and improve faculty
effectiveness ultimately rely on the professional development of the individual
faculty members (Levine, 2005). Critical reflection may facilitate the process
of making implicit beliefs explicit, allowing for these individuals to develop,
reflect, and enhance their classroom practices.

Research supports the relevance and criticality of
reflective practice in professional development programs both for college
faculty (Wlodarsky, 2005; Hatala [Wlodarsky], 2002) and for K-12 classroom
teachers (Walters, 2002).Findings
suggest (1) that reflection can, but may not, lead to changes in practice; (2)
reflective practice is a multi-dimensional process, and (3) reflective practice
includes discreet skills which may be taught and learned (Schon, 1987; Day,
1993; Usher, 1997;Feiman-Nemser and
Parker, 1992; Ferry and Ross-Gordon, 1998; Hoffman-Kipp, Artiles, and
Lopez-Torres, 2003).

One of the authors of this paper has found (Wlodarsky, 2005)
that reflection among college faculty members can be linked to changed beliefs
and practices in their classrooms.This
current research study collected qualitative data to describe the nature and
characteristics of reflective practice in an authentic setting, and
quantitative data to test the associative strength of these characteristics
with select demographic variables identified in the literature and collected by
the researchers for the study population.

Population and
Sample:The researchers recruited a
voluntary sample from a population of faculty members within a college of
education at a private, liberal arts university located in the Midwest.This
college implements a reflection-based model of annual faculty review and
professional development.College
documents signify a faculty belief that teachers are reflective decision makers who merge theory and practice; possess
ethical character; value the individual and unity; embrace tradition and
change; and acknowledge the service nature of educating.The characteristics of this college suggested
to the researchers that it was an appropriate venue for the current research
study.Sampling bias was controlled in
part through the use of archival documents which were developed prior to the
study announcement.The sample included
individuals who selected to participate at one of three levels as follows.

Level 1Anonymous
participationby completing a survey
only.

Level 2Anonymous
participationby completing a surveyand attaching it to any narrative
documents (archival data/reports) which may have already been written containing
personal reflections on teaching, scholarship and service, such as narratives
submitted for purposes of annual reviews, third year review, and/or promotion
and tenure.

Level 3Confidential
participation by completing levels one and two above, and participation in
structured, follow-up interviews with the researchers.

A total of 22 professors have provided narrative documents
and/or surveys as Level 1 and 2 participants in the study.A total of 8 professors have agreed to
participate in structured interviews with the researchers under Level 3
participation.At the time of the
preparation of this report, the researchers had not begun the interview
process.

Research Questions:The research questions which were
answered using the data collected are as follows:

What
are the characteristics of reflective systems?

Can
scaffolding and guidance affect the nature of reflection?

What
typologies of reflection are evidenced in the COE among faculty?

What
is professional development for a college faculty member, and is there
evidence that the reflective process results in professional development
under this definition?

Does an
individual’s stage in the professional developmental continuum affect the
nature of reflection?

Credibility and
Validity:The researchers worked
independently of each other to establish initial themes and categories among
qualitative data as a first step in enhancing the credibility of the
project.The themes which emerged have
been observed in related literature as cited throughout this manuscript,
providing confirmatory support for the reliability of these emerging
themes.The separate tentative findings of
the individual researchers were synthesized to develop this paper.

Data Sources:Annually, faculty members in the college
complete a self-report of activity in
teaching, scholarship and service during the previous year.The annual review template solicits personal
reflections on these activities, which are frequently contextualized to a
personal plan for action in the upcoming contract year.The researchers solicited volunteers from the
college faculty who were willing to participate in the study as outlined above.When the research study was announced, all
faculty received a brief survey to collect demographic information which has
been associated in previous research with reflective capacity and its characteristics.The researchers asked the faculty to define
reflection, and to provide select tools which they may use to facilitate
reflection on their own professional development.These surveys were numbered, with a
corresponding number assigned to the reflection narrative to allow correlation
of demographics to emergent qualitative themes and categories without
jeopardizing participant anonymity.

Data Analyses and
Findings:Respondents were asked to
compose a response to the following item in a text box on the survey
instrument:

In
the space provided below, please write out a brief definition of reflection and
describe how this practice might relate to your professional development as a
faculty member.As part of your
definition, describe the tools you use to facilitate your reflection(s).Examples of tools include but are not limited
to: portfolios, journal writing, student comments, peer feedback, course
artifacts, discussions, inquiry questions, and video/audio-taping.Please indicate any other tools you have used
to facilitate your reflection(s).

Constant comparative procedures were used to identify
emergent themes and categories which pertain to the nature and characteristics
of the reflective practices of the participants.The researchers coded the narrative
separately to monitor researcher bias, and to support the credibility of the
themes identified.After separate coding
of the narrative, the researchers identified several clusters which emerged.
The chart below delineates these clusters around the overall category of
reflection.

Chart 1. Conceptual Clusters from Survey Instrument

Reflection as an Internal Cognitive Process

Analysis of the survey indicated that reflection for the
participants is an internal, cognitive process using the brain as the primary “tool.”External planning documents, formalized data
collection or analysis, or journals were not typically incorporated to assist
reflection or to help the faculty member overcome personal biases which may
have been overly critical.The tendency for
participants was to evaluate their beliefs and practices using cognition as a
means to an end; the goal being to improve practices deemed unsuccessful, or
weak.The participants engaged in a cognitive
process whereby an awareness surfaced—a sense of knowing emerged.In short, they had to “think about” their
experiences for some period of time.The
reflective process was clearly localized, personal, and cognitive.Although they were willing to listen to input
from their peers, a significant part of the process was private, a process
which no one else knew about unless the participant decided to reveal it—the
hidden thoughts of the faculty member.Select
narrative quotations which support this theme include:

“I use my two hour
commute to critically examine why something was successful in my class and what
may have impacted successes and failures.”

“I define reflection
as focused thinking about my teaching.I
do this informally after each class by asking myself what went well.”

“I tend to do this
[reflection] while I am commuting but would like to begin journaling.”

“The technique that I
have found to be quite helpful is to try to do a written daily recap of each
class that I teach.Sometimes the recap
is quite brief; other days it may be somewhat detailed.When I teach the course again, I can refer to
these daily recaps to reflect upon changes that need to be made.”

“In terms of my
professional practice, the tools I use include course evaluations and the
occasional promotion and tenure portfolios as formal reflections.For me, I reflect in a more informal sense
most especially in my car, or late at night.It is those times that I am most in my own head.”

The connection between cognition and reflection was
described by King and Kitchener (1994, 2004; King, 2000; King, 1992) as the
development of reflective judgment or
epistemic cognition.These terms are defined as “a developmental
progression that occurs between childhood and adulthood in the way people
understand the process of knowing and in the corresponding ways that they
justify their beliefs about ill-structured problems (1994, p.13).This cognition-reflection model has been
validated in studies with nurses (Platzer, 2000; Platzer, Drake & Ashford,
2000); pre-service education majors (Amobi, 2003); economics majors in B.S.
degree programs (Ilacqua & Prescott, 2003); with female students (Friedman,
2004); with seminary students (Dale, 2005); with both young and middle-years
adults (Pirttila-Backman and Kajanne, 2001), and with lay-adults in Finland
(Kajanne, 2003).Pascarella &
Terenzini (1991) suggest the King and Kitchener model may be the “best known
and most extensively studied” cognitive growth model.However, the researchers for this current
study have failed to find a study where the model has been applied to the
ill-structured problems inherent in the professional practices of higher
education faculty members.

King and Kitchener (1994 and 2004) suggest that the emergence
of both cognition and reflective capacity in adulthood is developmental—as a
stage theory.These stages are viewed as
both optimal (the upper limits of capability) and functional (the typical level
of operation), and adults frequently apply cognitive strategies or
epistemologies from more than one stage to any given problem-solving
scenario.Of interest to this current
study is the movement from personal cognition in problem-solving (King and Kitchener’s stages one
through three) toward a social cognition of problem-solving (stages 4 and 5)
wherein the individual is capable of allowing “others” access to the reflection
and cognition process.We detected this
phenomena in many participants in our study—where they identify the role of a
trusted peer in critical reflection on performance, and we pursue this concept
further in the section below.More
specifically to this current section, is the observation at the higher stages,
i.e. 6 and 7, that “complex problems require some type of thinking action
before a resolution can be constructed” (1994, p. 67).Hence, when we capture the terms thinking, thinking about, examine
or focused thinking in participant
narratives, we are most likely observing higher-level reflection by the
participants under the King and Kitchener
model.

Input From Peers in Informal Settings

It was evident that the participants were open to input from
their peer(s); those they specifically defined as confidants.This process of feedback or input tended to
take place in informal settings, i.e. in the hallway, one’s office, at lunch,
etc.It appeared that this informal
setting provided a comfort level in which the participants were open to
positive and negative feedback.The
informal setting seemed to make them feel less vulnerable, and in turn, more
willing to allow for input.This part of
the reflective process still can be defined as internal. The participant is
still choosing to process information; however, the actual information being
processed is coming from an external source.Select narrative quotations which support this theme include:

“A valuable tool has
been conversations with my colleagues in the car to and from our destination.”

“I ponder about how
each class went at the end of every day.If something did not go well, I dwell on it for days and usually have to
discuss it with someone.”

“I utilize a great
many of my peer networks to reflect on both the process and product of my
work.”

“Peer feedback
provides another avenue for reflection.Getting another peer’s take on my teaching helped me to grow as an
instructor.Discussions with students
and other peers enrich my passion for teaching and I always strive for the
best.”

Input from peers in an informal setting can be considered a
“mentoring” experience.Weasmer and
Woods (2003) found that teachers identified reflection as a primary outcome of
the mentoring experience.They found
that mentoring a student teacher motivated participants to rely upon
reflection-on-action to validate or to reframe thinking and consider modifying
practice.As the students, ripe with
awareness of contemporary pedagogy, shared the classroom, learning was
reciprocal.Also, because teaching is
usually an isolated activity, the added presence of a student teacher in most
cases resulted in a pleasant collegial environment (p.68)

Data from a study completed by Burbank and Kauchak (2003)
indicated that collaborative action research was perceived positively by both
preservice and inservice teachers on a number of dimensions including changing
teaching practice, changing views about research and as a vehicle to dialogue
about research and teaching practice.This finding was especially robust for the experienced teachers
participating in collaboration.In
addition, teaming led to feelings of “community and professionalism” (p.512).

In a study completed by Hatala (2002), she argued that the
simple fact that professors agreed to participate in the study was an
indication that they felt that reflecting on one’s beliefs and practices was
important.The participants were aware
that the researcher would be asking them to think about student learning and
teaching and its relationship to practice.The presence of the researcher throughout the observations, as commented
by all the participants, provided an awareness of what was taking place within
the classroom context that hadn’t existed before.In addition, the dialogue between the
researcher and participant(s) after class observations allowed for reflection
of their beliefs and practices.Last,
the focus group discussions that took place throughout the study provided a
means for issues to surface pertaining to student learning and teaching.Simply allowing oneself to listen and respond
to others facilitated self-reflection (p.151).

Throughout Hatala (2002), different types of reflection were
taking place; for example, there was private reflection during the survey and
interviews and social reflection during the after-class reflections and focus
groups.According to Hatala, this
distinction is significant in that social reflection seemed to be more
influential in terms of awareness and behavior change than did private
reflection.The themes of mentoring,
collegial relationships and professional dialogue account for the importance of
this type of reflection in creating awareness and behavior change in college
classrooms (p. 153).

Quinlan and Akerlind’s (2001) study demonstrates the
importance of considering the context within which peer review of teaching and
collaborative teaching activities are attempted.The discipline, the university, and the
department all contribute to shaping the context and appropriate nature of such
innovations.Based on current research,
professors will most likely react positively to collaboration if collaborative
work patterns already exist, agreement exists upon a set of external standards,
an involvement in education reform is present, the faculty member desires for
the need or problem to be addressed, reasonable levels of morale and trust are
present between faculty, and confidence is there in terms of status and
reputation.

Finally, again looking at the model proposed by King and
Kitchener (1994), the movement from personal, internal reflective
thought—relying on an epistemology that is closed to external interpretation of
evidence—toward reflective thought that is open to ambiguity, to questioning of
self-interpretation, and to greater openness and reliance on social reflection
via peer and confidant communications, would be considered evidence of growth
in reflective complexity.Our
participants, though they began with private contemplation of professional
activity—such as while driving alone in a car after class—told us they later
approached a colleague for input.This
observation confirms King and Kitchener’s contention that multiple stages of
reflection will be incorporated around the same proximate event.This observation also demonstrates King and
Kitchener’s distinction between optimal and functional reflection, i.e. our
participants demonstrated a capacity for higher level reflection, but also
utilized lower-stage reflective activities regularly.

Evaluative Nature of Reflection

The question arose, when analyzing the survey data, can the
reflective process be detached from evaluation, or judgment?The answer seems to be no:reflection is fundamentally driven by an
evaluative, judgmental frame of reference.These participants seemed concerned with finding value or judging the
worth of their teaching.The faculty
members tended to assign a value system to their reflections, i.e. clearly
focusing on their weaknesses in teaching and then engaging in a thought process
that would ultimately improve their teaching practices.Select narrative quotations which support
this theme include:

“Reflection means
thinking in an evaluative way about one’s practice and making a plan to
improve”.Tools I use include student
products, student evaluations, peer evaluations of teaching, feedback from
annual reviews, etc.”

“Reflection is
examining your curriculum and teaching practices to evaluate its [sic] strengths
and weaknesses in meeting student needs.”

“Reflection is to
ponder on past events/behaviors for the purpose of evaluation.”

“Reflection is the act
of processing what happened on a particular day with a particular lesson.I deconstruct what had transpired, looking
for an indication of what made it an effective or ineffective lesson, a good or
bad day, engaging or boring, etc.”

“Reflection is the
process of self-examination and self evaluation.It is examining different aspects of your
professional behaviors and addressing the areas that need improvement, need
explanation or emphasized.”

A later study by King and Kitchener (2004) discussed the
relationship of personal epistemologies—proofs for knowledge—and the movement
away from personal, unsubstantiated opinion toward evidence-based cognition and
reflection.Underlying this continuum is
an implicit movement in the developmental complexity of the individual away
from a non-questioning, “cognitively simplistic” belief—an absolute faith in
personal knowledge.Across the stages,
this belief system is gradually replaced by cognitively complex, judgmental and
critically reflective system of thought.There is an increased capability and proclivity to critique and judge
one’s performance and tentative solutions to ill-structured problems.King & Kitchener’s model would explain
our observation of the highly evaluative and judgmental frame of reference of
many of our participants.In fact, to
the degree that King & Kitchener are correctly describing adult
development—we should predict that for higher functioning adults (which we
would hope to find in higher education faculty), one should predict that higher
stages of reflection would manifest themselves with or through evaluative
terminology.

Reflective Process Gravitates Towards Teaching

Interestingly, the survey asked the participants towrite out a brief definition of reflection and describe how this
practice might relate to their professional development as a faculty
member.The majority of the participants
answered this question in reference to their beliefs and practices about their
teaching; they didn’t focus on research or service, which should be significant
components to their professional development, as these components influence the
promotion and tenure process. Select narrative quotations which support this
theme include:

“I define reflection
as focused thinking about my teaching.”

“Reflection is the
process I use to consider and reconsider my teaching methodology and its
effects on student performance.It
involves examining and re-examining my instruction, the projects I ask students
to do, the problems I ask them to solve, their performance on assessment
instruments and their reaction to my teaching performance with an eye to
improving both the student’s experience and outcome.”

“As a teacher, I
usually try to assess what worked for the students and what did not.I have responded by making careful and
incremental changes to my syllabi.”

Reflection is looking
back on lessons, presentations, and other pieces of work for ways to improve
teaching and gain knowledge and suggestions for future lessons.”

Increasingly urgent pleas for improvement in the quality of
college teaching have come from faculty, disciplinary societies, university
task forces, campus administrators, students and their families, state
legislatures, and governing boards. While all of these groups share a concern
for greater quality in college teaching, they differ in terms of their reasons
for being concerned (Paulsen
& Feldman,1995).

According to Dey, Ramirez, Korn, and Astin (as cited in
Paulsen & Feldman, 1995), expressions of concern about the quality of
college teaching arise from the faculty themselves, especially because of their
attitudes about the relative importance to be placed on teaching and research.
In 1992-93, 77 percent of 29,771 faculty at 289 colleges and universities
reported that their primary interests were "very heavily in" or
"leaning toward" teaching, while only 24 percent expressed the same
sort of primary interest in research. Among faculty at public universities,
97.8 percent reported that "to be a good teacher" was a "very
important" or "essential" professional goal (p. 35), but only
5.4 percent of these faculty reported that the statement "faculty are
rewarded for being good teachers" was "very descriptive" of
their college or university (pp. 38, 94). These findings are consistent with
those of another survey of 5,450 professors at 306 colleges and universities,
where 71 percent reported that their interests were "primarily in" or
"leaning toward" teaching but only 29 percent reported the same level
of interest in research (Carnegie Foundation 1989, p. 43). Furthermore, 35 percent
of all faculty and over 50 percent of faculty at doctoral and research
universities agreed with the statement, "The pressure to publish reduces
the quality of teaching at my university" (p. 51). Clearly, faculty are
themselves concerned about instruction and its improvement.

Cross (as cited in Paulsen & Feldman, 1995) suggested
that college teachers become classroom researchers. These college instructors
would view their classrooms as laboratories where they could continually
collect information about what and how their students learn in relation to what
and how they are being taught. Through careful reflection, instructors could
establish meaningful connections between their own teaching behaviors and their
students' learning processes and outcomes. Such efforts would also illuminate
the content-specific characteristics of effective teaching in a particular
discipline.

The involvement of teachers in searching for new knowledge
about teaching effectiveness also begins to build a foundation for improved
evaluation of teaching, an essential ingredient in rewarding teaching in
promotion and tenure decisions.Cross
states, “I can think of no action that would do quite as much for the
improvement of teaching and learning as to let a thousand classroom laboratories
bloom across the nation.That would be
taking teaching seriously, and it would move us toward our goal of quality
education for all” (Cross 1986, p. 14; as cited in Paulsen & Feldman, 1995).

Conclusion

Two observations with respect to the King and Kitchener
(1994) cognitive model seem particularly suitable for further research, as they
extend beyond the current understanding of this model with respect to adult
cognition and reflective judgment.First, while individuals can apply
reflective behaviors from any stage below their optimal level for any given
reflective event, must they move sequentially through the lower stages as a
cognitive organizational activity, or can they “jump” directly to the optimal
level?The data captured in this current
study seem mixed with respect to this question.Some narrative reflected a sequential, bottom-to-top movement in
reflective activity, while other narrative seemed less linear.Second, in Darling-Hammond and Sykes (1999)
compendium on the teaching profession, Loewenberg-Ball and Cohen (1999) propose
more extensive use of video-taped classroom vignettes as cognitive tools for
preservice and inservice graduate coursework and professional development, and
as a source to guide personal reflection.Our findings would suggest that individual’s utilizing such
“non-experienced experiences” as cognitive prompts may be limited in their
ability to conceptualize both the problems and potential solutions from these
vignettes—lacking the personal, historical and sensory attachment to the events
on the tapes. Reflection is observed, both in our study and in King and
Kitchener’s work, to have cognitive implications and limitations.Clearly, more work in this area would have
both theoretical importance—as it enhanced our understanding of King and
Kitchener’s reflective judgment model—and practical importance for the
development of instructional materials and resources in the cognitive domain to
assist in the development of both reflective college faculty and teachers more broadly.

A second theme supported the notion of an informal mentoring
experience among faculty within higher education. The participants were open to
input from their peer(s); those they specifically defined as confidants.This process of feedback or input tended to
take place in informal settings, i.e. in the hallway, one’s office, at lunch,
etc.It appeared that this informal
setting provided a comfort level in which the participants were open to
positive and negative feedback.The
informal setting seemed to make them feel less vulnerable, and in turn, more
willing to allow for input.It would
seem appropriate to explore the current literature on mentoring to determine
additional characteristics and/or situations that would facilitate mentoring
processes, in turn, allowing for faculty to develop professionally using a team
approach to reflection.

Third, one of the major themes which emerged in this study
was the linking of reflection to personal improvement in somewhat of an
evaluative frame of reference.Participants referred to movement from weakness to strength and from
failure to success.The use of the terms
evaluation, evaluate, judge, and assess suggests a deficiency model when
reflecting on one’s teaching.This
deficiency model does not disappear when the researchers controlled for rank
and tenure, i.e. full, tenured professors demonstrate this deficiency mindset
as well as junior faculty.This
deficiency or evaluative model of reflection should be explored further, as it
has implications for post-tenure faculty development and generalized motivation
for reflection.It also raises the
question of whether individuals with more critical/judgemental personality
types might develop reflective capacity, i.e. movement toward King and
Kitchener’s more complex levels, through a different developmental path than,
say, professionals who are more adaptive and emotive.

Finally, improving the quality of higher education teaching
is a task which has risen to national prominence, as evidenced by recent
publications on quality issues in higher education (Levine, 2005; Shuster,
2003; McNaught, 2003).Nevertheless, our
study finds a singular focus among study participants on the quality of their
teaching—which would seem to suggest that Levine’s uniform criticisms are at
least over-generalized.Among the
faculty who participated in this present study—there are individuals who do not
prioritize research interests over and above teaching students.Whether or not this finding represents a
cultural artifact of only the faculty participating in this present study
and/or this specific university environment, or whether this interest in
improving teaching in higher education is a characteristic of a larger
population of professors should be the subject of more careful and extensive
research.

References:

Amobi, F.A.
(2003).Finding and speaking their own
voices: Using an online survey to elicit pre-service teachers’ reflectivity
about educational beliefs.Reflective Practice, 4(3).

Hatala, [Wlodarsky]
R. L. (2002).Understanding the relationship between undergraduate college of
education professors’ beliefs about student learning and teaching in their
classroom practices.Dissertation: ClevelandStateUniversity.

Walters, H. D.
(2002). The philosophical aims for the continuing
professional education of teachers held by administrators, educational directors,
program designers, and principal investigators funded by the National Sea Grant
College Program.Dissertation: The University of Southern Mississippi.